An In Depth Look at Digital Colouring Part 2

If you missed it here is Part 1

Now for the little extra sparkle. If you do it right no-one will notice but if you don't do it your picture will look like your dog did it.

Now an illustration of any kind is amazing coming from a dog, but you my friend are a homo-erectus with opposable thumbs and a giant brain which could at the very least be put to work on something other than computer solitaire.

We are going to do some reflected light - do it from behind even! Which isn't a euphemism.

In the "real world" light bounces off things like mirrors and shiny things, but also to a lesser known extent everything else. So when I say "do it from behind", what I mean is that from wherever your light source it coming, behind your lit object reflected light will bounce back onto it. In essence this acts as another dimmer light source.

As well as bouncing off objects, light also takes on the colour of whatever it bounces off of. So if your character is sitting on a green sofa, green light will be thrown onto them.
lol balls
Create a new layer (ctrl+shift+N) set simply to 'normal' and place it atop everything but the lineart. Name the layer "I like to watch monkeys dance" or something similar and begin to select all the transparencies of the layers beneath it that you wish to have the reflected light fall upon. Do this in the way that you did earlier in this tutorial for making an un-selection by using (control+shift+click) on the layer thumbnails.

When you are finished, all of your coloured areas should be selected. Go back to your "I like to watch monkeys dance" layer and hit the little button to create a "layer mask". The button looks like a circle inside a square.

Now try drawing a few strokes on your new layer (being sure the layer is selected and not the layer mask) and you should be able to draw freely without your strokes showing up outside the masked area. If your strokes are showing up OUTSIDE the area you want masked then simply do this step over but invert your selection (ctrl+I) before hitting the 'create layer mask' button.
layer masks
Now depending on your image you may or may not have a background that you have already coloured in the previous steps. If you do all you need to do is pick the dominant colour from your background and softly brush that colour along the back, usually the dark, edges of your character/objects.

Adjust the opacity of this layer to your tastes
back shading
Now you should have something that even your talented dog is envious of.

Your last step is to take to your "Curves", "Levels", and "Hue/Saturation" tools to town on your layers until everything is looking contrasty and colourful enough. Sometimes I tone elements down at this stage, other times I beef up contrast that I went too soft on earlier.
curves menu

Flatten your image (ctrl+shift+E) and try out "auto levels" (ctrl+shift+L), "auto contrast"(ctrl+shift+alt+L), and "auto colour" (ctrl+shift+B) to see if they do anything for you. If you like what you see then you aren't hard enough on yourself and should take a lesson from all the artists that like to create masterworks and hail them as poo-poo just to see you break down and cry over your own pitiful excuse for an illustration.

 

 

To read my first article on Digital Colouring go HERE

Or go here if you are Lazy Like Me
last anim

Thanks for reading! Questions, Comments and Inquiries can be made to turquoiserabbit@gmail.com

Would you like to Buy a Print of this picture?